The garden

The literary hall presents the change in the self-image of the city through the figure and cult of a single symbolic character, Mihály Csokonai Vitéz. The exhibition space, and the three spaces that are connected in remembrance of Csokonai – the botanical garden, the memorial garden and the cemetery garden – display an imaginary garden that serves as a place for lounging and contemplation.

The botanical garden relates to the work of the botanising Debrecen Circle, which, besides Mihály Fazekas, János Földi, and József Szentgyörgyi, Csokonai was also an active member of. The figure of the poet, which formulates the contemplative way of life, and who considers the garden to be the ultimate asylum, appears through botany in the Botanical garden, his poems, glossary compositions, and his contribution to the creation of the botanical book. 

The Cemetery Garden is the graveyard on Hatvan street, with the tombstone of Csokonai as the symbol of the Árkádia suit, a litigation that wet on between Ferenc Kazinczy and the people of Debrecen for the possession of Csokonai’s memory. At this stage of the cult, the pedestal would be due to the idealised author who exists only in the poems, but did not exist for his hometown just yet: the enchanting, wandering Csokonai of legends lives on the lips of the people, and the author of jocular poems and the figure of the companion who rebels against the order lives on the lips of the students.

The driving force in the development of the Memorial Garden was the reconstruction of the area behind the Great Church into a cultural, literary, and historical space, as it was abandoned after the fire of 1802. A fenced sculpture garden was designed here, where the statue of Csokonai by Miklós Izsó was erected first, demonstrating the devotion of the people of Debrecen to the Csokonai cult. Temporarily, the statue of the Dying lion was placed here, then the “Hungária” by András Tóth – on the spot of which the Bocskai statue can be seen today –, the Memorial column of Protestant Galley Slaves, and the bronze vessel which kept alive the memory of the benefactors of the Reformed Church and the college: István Szombathy and Zsuzsánna Veresmarty.